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Introduction
At
the Great Plains Symposium on Ethnicity, University of Nebraska
at Lincoln in 1978, the participants voiced their battle-cry against urban
ethnic studies, and declared "the coming of age of rural social histories."
Eleanor Turk complained that "social historians have tended to concentrate
their study on urban ethnic populations." Reviewing the scholarship on
ethnic groups, one has to admit that scholars have focused their research
on metropolitan rather than rural areas. Metropolitan areas have certainly
become the home of a great number of different ethnic groups. A wide range
of industries and occupations have attracted newcomers, and have made
cities desirable places for settlement. Therefore, scholars have found
an enormous amount of information on the lives of immigrants which were
the basis of many urban studies. Cities, such as Cincinnati, Chicago,
Pittsburgh, and over and over again New York City have created an "urban
tradition" of ethnic social histories.
All these studies have
added to our understanding of ethnic urban life, but I have to agree with
Eleanor Turk that "our formal understanding of ethnicity in America has
been limited to the urban viewpoint." Many members of the Symposium in
1978 have since directed their interest to the rural aspects of immigration
and ethnicity, and have produced valuable insights on ethnic rural life.
In this study, I also
turn away from ethnic life in metropolitan cities. I will focus my research
on the German experience in a small town in Kansas. Here, a small town
means a place with a population less than 20,000 people. All over the
United States, small towns were selected by immigrants for their new homes.
These places too, often unknown outside their own state, played an important
role in the experience of immigrants.
To show their importance,
I have chosen Lawrence, Kansas, a town in the north-east of Kansas close
to the Missouri border, as an example of a "small town German settlement."
Founded shortly after the opening of the territory in 1854, Lawrence is
worthy of attention because of its political and economic significance
among the towns of Kansas. The convenient location of Lawrence on the
Kansas River, and later its railroad connections to the east and west,
also made Lawrence the center of trade in northeast Kansas. Thus it was
chosen by a number of German-born families as a new home.
The aim of this study
is to explore the German community of Lawrence, Kansas, from its formation
in 1854 to its decline in the early part of the twentieth century. Of
special interest will be questions on how and why Germans moved to Lawrence.
Furthermore, I will look at how Germans preserved their language, costumes,
and belief and value-systems. Two German-speaking churches, a German-language
newspaper, and a German club, the Turnverein, existed in town.
What was their role in the community? Did the small town setting of Lawrence
produce a different immigration experience for Germans than in metropolitan
areas?
I have already used the
term "ethnic group" which needs clarification. A number of scholars have
defined the term "ethnic group." Among them are Charles Mindel and Robert
Haberstein who stated that "an ethnic group consists of those who share
a unique social and cultural heritage that is passed on from generation
to generation." James Banks explained that "individuals who constitute
an ethnic group share a sense of group identification, a common set of
values, political and economic interests, behavior patterns, and other
culture elements which differ from those of other groups within a society...
Ethnic groups are frequently identified by distinct patterns of family
life, language, recreation, religion, and other customs which cause them
to be different from others" Milton Gordon defined an ethnic group as
" a group with a shared feeling of peoplehood" based on race, religion,
or national origin, or some combination of all these categories.
In Lawrence, Germans were
primarily bound together by their shared national origin, their common
language, and their immigration experience. All German-born immigrants
were, therefore, members of the German community which expressed itself
in the formation of German speaking churches, a Turnverein and
a German-language newspaper. To the degree individuals participated in
the activities of the German community was their own choice. Very active
members might have been members of the German St. Paul's Lutheran Church
and subscribers to the German newspaper. Less active members might have
been people who spoke German at home and shopped at German stores. The
main characteristic of the community was that its members shared an identity
which was based on their national origin and the use of the German language.
Within the field of American
Studies, social histories of an ethnic group are of special importance.
They allow reflection upon a single ethnic group, as well as on American
society because it allows for comparative ethnic studies. Furthermore,
social histories combine a wide range of research methods and materials.
Economic and political data, as well as biographies, oral and written
histories, genealogy, and literature studies are used to describe the
life of American subcultures.
In this study, I have
used a wide range of books and materials on ethnic groups in the United
States in general, and German immigrants in particular. Works which introduced
me to Kansas' and Lawrence's history, family histories, government documents,
local records, maps and photographs led me back into Lawrence's past.
There is no room to introduce all of them, but a number were particularly
helpful. Most background information on German immigration to the United
States was taken from Albert Faust's The German Element in the United
States and LaVern Rippley's The German-Americans. Faust's book
covers the German experience in the United States from the seventeenth
century until the 1920s in a detailed way. Rippley also gives a general
history of German immigration. Both authors explore German-American schools,
theaters, architecture and newspapers. Howard Furer's The Germans in
America, 1607-1970, and Dietmar Kuegler's Die Deutschen in Amerika:
die Geschichte der Deutschen Auswanderung in die USA seit 1683, as
well as Wolfgang Koellermann and Peter Marschalck's article "German Emigration
to the United States" in Perspectives in American History, are
chronological histories of German immigration to the United States . They
include examinations why Germans came to America, where they went and
what jobs they took.
Frederick Luebke's Bonds
of Loyalty and Carl Wittke's German-Americans and the War are
studies on the German-Americans in World War I. These books deal with
the political background of the conflict and the dilemma which many German-Americans
faced with the outbreak of the war. They also examine anti-German feelings
throughout the country and the consequences they had for many German-American
communities.
For information on immigration
to Kansas, I used Justice Neale Carmen's study Foreign Language Unites
in Kansas, as well as his unpublished manuscript which is available
in the University of Kansas archives. In his studies, Carmen gives useful
statistics on ethnic groups in Kansas. Tables on how many people of one
ethnic group settled in given areas, as well as the number of churches
and schools, are given in the book. The unpublished manuscript also includes
a section on ethnic groups in Lawrence.
Frederick Luebke's Ethnicity
on the Great Plains is a collection of essays on different ethnic
groups on the great Plains. Several articles published by Eleanor Turk
in Kansas History on the Germans in Kansas, such as "The Germans
of Atchison," "Settling the Heartlands," and "German Newspapers in Kansas"
were also of help.
Local histories shed light
on the development of Lawrence and also provided very useful information.
A.T. Andreas' History of the State of Kansas, as well as Richard
Cordley's A History of Lawrence Kansas, from the First Settlement to
the Close of the Rebellion, and David Dary's Lawrence, Douglas
County, Kansas: An Informal History are only three of many such histories.
Another main resource
for information of German immigration to Kansas was census material. The
Territorial Papers, the Kansas State Census of the years 1875 to 1925
and the Federal Census of the years 1860 to 1920 were useful on the number
of German immigrants to Lawrence throughout the years. The census material
reveals the names and numbers of family members, their age, occupation,
place of birth and where they had come from before moving to Lawrence.
Church records, city directories,
plat books, tax records, and local newspapers provided most important
information on community life. The German alien registration records of
1917-18 were important to determine how many German-born Lawrence residents
had to register during World War I. This material included the person's
data and place of birth, the addresses of family members in Germany, fingerprints,
signature and pictures. Further, many strolls around Lawrence and visits
to local sites and private homes offered valuable insight into Lawrence's
past and presence.
Chapter one deals with
German immigration to the United States before and after the Civil War.
It also explores German immigration to Kansas, Germans during the Civil
War and local Lawrence history.
Chapter two covers a wide
range of information on Germans in Lawrence. It explains German network
systems which were especially important for newly arrived immigrants.
It further looks at German settlement patterns in Lawrence, the German
boarding house, German women, and occupations of German settlers.
Chapter three is exclusively
dedicated to the Lawrence Turnverein. The chapter includes an examination
of the German Turner movement in Germany and in the United States. It
then focuses on the history of the Lawrence Turnverein and its
role in the German community.
Chapter four explores
the German-language newspaper Die Germania as well as the German
Methodist Episcopal Church and the German St. Paul's Lutheran Church in
town. It includes both histories and interpretations of all three establishments.
Chapter five deals with
further issues which effected German immigrants in Lawrence. Here, ethnic
and race relations and prohibition in Kansas will be discussed in the
first part of the chapter. The latter part concentrates on the later nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries when the refusal of second-generation Germans
to carry on their ethnic backgrounds and World War I threatened the survival
of the German community in Lawrence.
No account can ever be
complete but every effort has been made to give an accurate picture of
the life of the Germans in Lawrence. Limited to the scope of a thesis,
I am aware that certain areas still need further exploration. Other areas
are omitted totally. Among these areas are detailed information on family
and household structures, political involvement of Germans in Lawrence,
German Jewish immigrants, and a detailed discussion on class divisions.
For the convenience of
my reader, I have translated all German sources into English. I have tried
to stay as close to the exact translations as possible. Therefore, the
quotations might lack the elegance and smoothness of a free translation.
A number of German terms have been retained in the text without translation
because no adequate translation could be found or the term has been accepted
into the English language.
Abstract
| Introduction | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 |
Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Conclusion | Appendix | Bibliography
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